Page 191 of On His Team

By the time I shower and change, the room has started settling. Guys are still talking, but the volume has dropped, and the adrenaline is finally wearing off enough that I remember I have a phone.

Fourteen messages.

Mom. Dad. Derek. The team group chat, even though half the people in it are standing within thirty feet of me. A couple former teammates.

Five from Gianna.

I open hers first.

Gianna: ROWAN FUCKING LAURENS!

Gianna: FIRST GOAL!

Gianna: I TOLD YOU!

I smile.

Gianna: YOU ACTUALLY DID IT!

Gianna: I’M SO PROUD OF YOU!

I stare at that one longer than the others.

Me: You screamed.

Her answer is immediate.

Gianna: OBVIOUSLY.

Me: Heard you from ice.

Gianna: No, you did not.

Gianna: Come find me.

I put the phone in my pocket.

The girls are waiting in the hall near the family area. Benson gets to Lucy first. Stanley opens both arms at Aspen. Blue goes straight to Melly. Percy disappears toward Penelope.

I find Gianna.

She is standing beside Mara in a Camden sweatshirt, hair still in the same ponytail from this morning. She looks exhausted. Happy. She sees me and her whole face changes.

Mara looks between the two of us, and something smug immediately settles over her face.

“I’m going to find a bathroom,” she announces with absolutely no subtlety.

Gianna points toward the wall beside us. “There’s one right there.”

Mara doesn’t even look. She just keeps walking down the hall.

Gianna watches her go and shakes her head. “She’s terrible.” Then she turns back to me, and whatever annoyance Mara caused disappears from her face almost instantly. Her smile comes back, bright and tired and completely impossible to miss.

“You scored,” she says. “You actually scored.”

I laugh. “You told me to.”

“I’m serious.”